Shakira on the strength and resilience behind her new album

The Colombian superstar’s first new album in seven years, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, details her tumultuous breakup with her ex-partner and the father of her two children. She sits down with Tom Power for a revealing interview about vulnerability, survival and what really matters in her life.

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But you know when it rains it poures yeah and difficulties just come in together they just when when they you know suddenly you have periods of stability and peace calm and calm and and then uh all of a sudden you have to deal with hell yeah so that’s what

Happened to me I went to hell and came Back Shakira how are you very well thank you how you doing well well congratulations on the album I really loved it thank you so much really yeah I really did I really love listening to so great to hear thank you so much um how are you feeling now that it’s out ah

Relieved um so happy reading the comments from my fans just so emotional about about everything I’m I’m adrenalized and um inspired inspired to to give them more to go on tour to meet them in person and just celebrate this moment I’ve been waiting for this for so

Long um I’ve worked so hard on this album for months and months and uh it just feels really great to to to see the recognition and to feel appreciated and and valued as an artist is it’s amazing it’s uh my fans have been there the whole time every step of the way

Accompanying me injecting me with with with passion for what I do um sustaining me in bad times celebr me in good times and I can’t I can’t express how amazing my fans are with me they’ve been so loyal and so so so so Noble and they’re

Everything to me so so I’m just so thankful you know now that the album is out it’s not mine anymore it’s theirs and yeah it’s a great feeling it’s a it’s a really beautiful album and I want to talk a little bit about the construction behind it because um I

Can’t think of an album I listen to that had so many different like genres of music on it you know like there were moments of like pop and of course you know and dance music but there’s also these the beautiful kind of moments of rock rock music there’s a sort of a

Great Nena moment uh uh there’s sort that El Hefe tune which is sort of like SCA yeah yeah SCA Mexican SCA uhhuh when you went afro afro beat regon Bas keep going yeah uh may I yeah Pop um yeah how um I think I ran out of

Genres H how how intentional was that when you were going into the making of This Record like did you know what you wanted to do stylistically how did you choose that nothing about this album is intentional uh it’s a conceptual album but that was that was never the purpose

Um no one intends to go through the the hardship and the difficult things that I went through when I was writing this when I was raw with a knife between my teeth when I was was licking my wounds uh but you know life gives you lemons and you make lemonade and I what

I did is uh what I what I made is songs I made songs you know um and that’s the way I I healed through this process um and as I was well I’m still healing uh but but definitely these songs were were the a big part of of that of my that

Medicine you know they they they were right the songs creating these songs was the most therapeutic uh thing I found during these past months and while I was creating them I was just exploring and curious and experimenting and just enjoying my time in the studio um having this encounter with myself rebuilding

Myself um and and kind of getting to know a little bit more about about myself about my my my inner strength or what I could what I was able to do so really the genres are just um the genres that I experimented with are just a

Response and uh and every song had its demands and every song told me and dictated to me at every single moment what I was supposed to do and and I just followed my instincts I didn’t really premeditate anything or or I don’t believe in in following formulas or in

Listening to record Executives you know or or or paying attention to what’s to what’s in right now what’s in style I just I just follow my my impulses so that’s how this album was made out of impulses out of the necessity the the compulsion to to to express myself to

Elaborate intense emotions and and feelings and anger and frustration and all of that and it ended up being transformed into other things you know what do you mean by um the like you you use the word medicine like writing this music and creating this music became

Medicine for you how does that work what do you mean I think catharsis is the word um I I was I was going through so many things that um were so hard to deal with I was in the mud and and I had to rebuild myself uh so somehow I had to

Pick up the pieces of myself you know bone by bone yeah put them together again and music was the glue um and in that process my fans were there uh my audience was there uh understanding me supporting me uh giving me back my confidence um showing me that I was

Stronger than what I thought I was was you know I I felt very weak at times I felt very vulnerable at times but then writing these these songs making this music made me regain strength um and yeah I I remember when I when were just remembering uh um before

How how I started this whole process with the first song monotonia I was torn it was a huge effort for me to go in the studio and start working again why cuz I I just I was literally I was I was literally walking like a zombie I just I couldn’t believe

What was happening to me what was happening with my life how my dreams were all crumbling in front of my eyes and my the the solution of a family is is it’s a pretty big deal is probably the most traumatic event one of the most traumatic events in my of my entire life

And then added to that I had all the other the losses and all the things that happened to me that I don’t want to get into all that now but but um but you know when it rains it poures yeah and difficulties just come in together they

Just when when they you know suddenly you have periods of stability and peace calm and calm and and then H all of a sudden you have to deal with hell yeah so that’s what happened to me I went to hell and came back yeah from it I and and and and

Music my own my own my ability to create music uh and that artistic experience is what gave me uh it was my salvation it saved me I and knowing that I had fans out there that was my safety net yeah that was people who would listen to you

And love you oh my God my fans are the best F in the whole world how did you feel how did you feel when you actually wrote the songs like when you were writing these sort of very cathartic songs when you were when you were I

Don’t know what you do if you write with a pen or on your phone or or anything like that you know or or on my phone sometimes sometimes I I use a good old pen yeah what were the what were the feelings you sort of had in your body

And in your mind as these things were coming out do you know what I mean different kind of feelings you know because the road to Healing is not linear yeah there’s valleys and Peaks and curves and and there are good days and bad days and there’s ups and downs and

And it’s a process uh so each song tells different stories from different perspectives from different um they’re all different kinds of emotions um and but the important thing is that this album contains 16 songs that have a narrative and and a language but they’re full of variance and Dynamics and there’s

Moments of frustration and anger and there’s moments of Celebration and Triumph and and uh and new found strength and and celebrating that strength and resilience and there’s a little bit of everything you know now that this yeah now that this album is out it’s a very

Personal album now that it’s out is like I said before it’s not mine anymore it’s it’s it’s it belongs to so many people that I know can’t feel represented in these um in these songs that are um that that that contain emotions that are Universal you know because human

Suffering is it’s it’s it’s Universal it’s it’s it’s prehistoric and uh but also you know celebration and joy uh it’s part of it’s it’s part of all all of that is part of human life I wanted to ask about um uh acrostico mhm um I love that song almost more than any

Other song in the record um can you tell people who are listening just who the by the way great collaborators on this record yeah like oh yeah got cardi being on the record it’s great and Carl G on the record that’s really good who aree tell people the collaborat the best

Collaboration this is doesn’t get better than that these collaborators are my two sons uh they were eight and 10 when they uh participated in the song they it wasn’t planned I wrote this song for them and it’s um it’s in acrostic which is you know like if you if you read it

In well I don’t know for for the English speakers but for the Spanish speakers you know if you read it vertically you see the names of my sons Milan and Sasha that’s an acrostic so each letter H it’s the be uh each letter of their names is the beginning of each

Sentence first vers is Milan second verse is Sasha that’s why it’s called acrostic that’s beautiful um acrostico but um when they when they heard the song they said oh Mom well they used to visit me in the studio and just hang out and when they when they listen to the

Song they said Mom can we can we sing can you put can you can they started to sing into the mic and they sounded great and they were like can we B the song and I was like well I don’t know I you know

I was I I had doubts about it but they were like please please you always told us that if we do something for ourselves and if we if we if we exploit our talents that you would that that that is a good thing and I and I said yeah yeah

I’ve always said that so okay then okay record they they wanted to record they they then they wanted to be in the video they wanted to play how did you feel how did you feel when they were singing how did you it’s so so special so emotional emotional

Is I’m telling you it doesn’t get better than that than to to see your own children singing and playing to a song that you wrote for them it’s the most special thing you can ever imagine do you think um ever about that they’ll grow up and and hear this record

And hear themselves and and you sing on that that’s a that’s true true it’s an immortalized moment in which they it’s a moment in time we’ve been through so much together yeah fair enough and um but we’ve we’ve come we’ve come out of it stronger I think more

Humane um and my kids are tremendously empathetic perhaps because they because they they because they had to you know face many things that maybe not all kids of their age yeah have faced and um yeah um it strikes me well thanks for talking about that well it strikes me

That um so there’re like what 11 and N now no 11 and N yeah um that’s around the same age you were when you first started writing songs too true is that right yeah yeah I started writing songs when I was eight yeah and about your dad

Right yeah the first one was inspired by my dad but not about him uh they were imaginary songs and about imaginary you know situations um and then yeah when I was 10 I started doing my first performances making some money yeah nice bought my

First card when I was 15 come on with a fake license where’d you get that um yeah never mind but hold on hold on when you were writing songs when you were a kid did you get any did you get any idea that they were good but seriously I was

Able to like play I played in every Bar Mitzvah yeah and and sweet 16 party yeah and every like uh company uh you know like internal companies parties and and they used to pay me you know few dollars here few dollars there and I well pesos in that

Case until I you know I was able to save and buy my own car 15 which was my dream I just wanted to have a car did you get did someone tell you like hey you’re you’re you’re gifted you have you’re you’re seeing music in a sort of a

Different way was was there a moment where someone kind of said to you hey you’re you might see music differently than everybody else my dad my dad when he listened to me singing in the car you know when you you go on road trips and and uh and someone starts singing

And you know my dad started to sing and I would follow and and he said wow listen to Listen to Shakira’s voice she has very potent powerful voice and I was like hm potent what does it mean but it made me feel so special and

Uh my mom always injected a lot of uh trust in myself my mom used to tell me you can be president you can be anything you want president of Colombia if you want I’m like well I don’t know about President of but she certainly made me

Feel that I was capable and I try to do the same with my kids well what’s interesting is that you ended up having so much more of an impact than your average musician like I remember so I’m I’m from like we talked about before I’m from Canada and like from a weird part

Of Canada this island in the middle of the this this madeup island in the middle of the ocean and um so it was it was laundry service it was Whenever Wherever that was the that was the song that kind of got me of course you know

Like that was the you know but there was a there was a girl in our town like in our in our in our social group from Columbia really and I remember when we were all dancing to a Colombian girl in the middle of the Atlantic yeah yeah

Yeah she was very cold and I remember we were like we were she was very very cold and we were like we were like all dancing to the song and a song would play on the radio we we’d flip out and dance and I remember her going like you

Guys don’t even know you don’t even know Shakira like I’ve been listening to her for like 10 10 15 I know better than you yeah like I have all of her albums before now before this English language stuff and we were like so it was really

You I saw her at Mass like she was talking about all that kind of stuff and it really strikes me that well maybe I’ll ask the question to my Colombian fans are the best PRS to have yeah they really did to have all of that success

And then to at that point switch to English for that record can you explain to me how much of a risk that felt like can you can you help me understand that that was nerve-wracking I barely spoke English I barely I I don’t even ask me how I wrote an entire

Album in English I did it I remember reading lard K oh Canadian yeah yeah Canadian I was trying to understand how Rhymes worked do you remember what Leonard Cohen it was I can you remind me was it Suzanne Suzanne takes you down was it so long Mar yeah that one time we

And I bought a book of L Cohen’s um uh writing and lyrics and and that helped me understand a lot about like Rhymes and and I bought a thesaurus and English Spanish dictionary and that’s how I I wrote objection which I remember was my first song in English and he made

It in the album yeah I made it in the laundry service album then I did Underneath Your Clothes beautiful song whenever whatever yeah and but I remember it was like standing at you know in front of an abys you know it was it was so nerve-wracking and then and

There was some sort of sort of vertigo cuz it was it was a challenge definitely an intellectual challenge more than anything I think it was an intellectual Challenge and back in back in the day the industry was watched by the The Gatekeepers you know the the people who who decide what would

Make into American radio or or uh uh you know and what wouldn’t they would decide like not like today when people decide it’s like music is democratized I think that’s a hug advantage and and the ltin the Latin artists today are are there there’s a lot of receptivity towards

Latin artist but when I first started out it was there was a lot of prejudice and people weren’t that receptive not everyone was so receptive you know well they say that’s because of you right like those artists talk about you as being this ground do they yeah me you

Must know that you must know they see it was a sort of um well you know I feel it felt at times that I was like out there the desert uh beating Rocks Under the Sun it was it was hard work um I had to do a lot of convincing convincing radio

Station directors convincing executive record Executives convincing journalists there was a lot of prejudice against Colombians and the the industry was dominated by Mal You by men in general there weren’t that many like female pop acts in in Latin America so it was they would exist without Shira and there

She is with them I love the record so much it’s such a great joy to get a chance to talk to you oh my god and thanks for having me this time I appreciate it thank you thank you I appreciate you coming all the way to to

To meet with me and to listen to my music I appreciate your Feedback